The Fine Art of Truth or Dare

by Melissa Jensen

  “So who do you have to do around here to get a beer?’” The words were still hanging over his head like a cartoon bubble when Chloe appeared. Our food was nowhere to be seen. She actually batted her spider-leg eyelashes at him. “Whatever’s local and on tap,” he ordered.

  I saw her hesitate, take a step back and then forward again. It was a dance I’d seen waitresses do with Daniel before. To card or not to card; was it worth risking his disapproval? Or, in this case, Stavros’s liquor license?

  I watched the silent battle in awe. Daniel waited patiently, giving Chloe a half smile that was less a friendly expression than a display of his incisors, which are slightly longer than the teeth on either side. It makes him look even more feline than he already does.

  “Oh, go ahead. Card him,” Frankie said wearily. “He doesn’t mind.”

  “No, no. That’s okay. I’ll be right back . . .” And she was gone.

  Daniel bared more tooth. “Nice, bro.”

  “What? You’re disgustingly proud of that ID.”

  Daniel laughed. “I am,” he agreed. “I totally am.”

  He shoved up his sleeves, displaying several thin leather bracelets and the red-and-black tip of a dragon tail just above his right elbow. I’ve never actually seen the head. It’s on Daniel’s back, Frankie told us once, between his shoulder blades. “So, my children, what is up?”

  “We’re trying to figure out how to get a soul-sucking, male lower life-form out of Ella’s head,” Frankie explained.

  “Kill him,” Daniel said casually. “Unless there’s a symbiotic thing going on and Ella would have to die, too. That would be a shame.”

  Here’s the thing about Daniel. He has always scared me a little. I don’t bother going through the scar-hiding motions; I’m convinced he can see right through clothing. Not that he leers. He’s not a leerer. He has two facial expressions: cold and amused. He also has a second tattoo, on the inside of his left wrist, that looks exactly like how I would expect a gang mark to look. Frankie has never said a word about that tat. Or much about his brother’s friends. Who have names like Ax and spend time in police custody.

  Here’s another thing about Daniel. He completely fascinates Sadie. She was leaning forward, mouth open a little, watching every move he made.

  Chloe was back with his beer in a blink. He accepted it with a slow, wider smile that had her looking a little dazed as she wove away between the tables. He took a long swallow and shook his head. “Man. This place.”

  Onstage, a skinny girl in what looked like a real mink jacket was crooning her way through “Hey There Delilah.”

  “Nice gate, Ella.”

  I looked back at Daniel. He waved toward my lap.

  “Oh.” I draw on my jeans when I don’t have paper. My bus had gotten stuck behind a trash truck, right in front of a seriously old churchyard. “Thanks.” I wasn’t sure how I felt about Daniel staring at my thigh, even if he had recognized the sketch for what it was.

  “Here.” Suddenly, he had a booted foot on the rung of my chair, legs spread, one pressed against mine. “Draw something.”

  “Oh, please,” Frankie muttered from his other side.

  I shook my head. “I don’t have a pen.”

  Sadie promptly disappeared beneath the table. I could hear the clank of Marc Jacobs chain handles and had a feeling in a second she would be asking, “Blue ink or black?”

  “Don’t you dare, Sadie,” Frankie said cheerfully. “Ella does not want to be inscribing my brother’s crotch.”

  True, I didn’t. Except I’d had the clearest vision of how a little Italian portal devil would look on the faded denim . . .

  “Fair enough,” Daniel said, sliding his foot off my chair. But he actually looked disappointed. For a second, anyway. “I assume there’s food coming?”

  “There is,” Frankie answered. “I’m sure it will come a hell of a lot faster if you do your vampire boy thing on Chloe again.”

  “Tsk, tsk. Jealousy, Miss Thing.”

  They bared their teeth at each other. It was scarily pretty.

  “What did you order?” Daniel asked. Frankie told him. “That is not a Chloe’s meal. That is penance.” He scanned the room for Chloe. She was already on her way over. “Spanakopita,” he called to her. “Fried zucchini. And a loaf of thou.” She giggled and headed for the kitchen, ignoring a dozen waving hands and several annoyed “heys.”

  Frankie rolled his eyes. Daniel laughed and drained half his beer. Across the table, Sadie was hunched into her jacket, looking deflated.

  Mink girl finished to polite applause. A pale, wispily goateed regular took her place and launched into “Buffalo Soldier.”

  Daniel stood up and loomed over Sadie. “Sing?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Do. You. Want. To. Sing. With. Me?”

  For a count of five, nothing happened. Then, a thousand sad wallflowers at a thousand loud dances were redeemed in that moment. Sadie positively lit up. “Yes,” she said, sitting up straight. “I do.”

  “Okay.” He started for the stage. “Lose the jacket.”

  She paused halfway out of her seat. “What?”

  “The jacket,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s freaking ugly.”

  I watched as Sadie froze.

  “C’mon, Sadie. I’m aging here.”

  Sadie slid the jacket off her shoulders. It caught at her elbows for a second, then she let it drop to the chair. Underneath, she was wearing jeans and a red cashmere sweater. She looked terrified, mortified, and really good.

  “Excellent,” Daniel said. “Let’s go.”

  Sadie folded herself up a little, but she went. Frankie snagged Daniel’s beer and took a sip. He wrinkled his nose and slid the mug back where it had been. None of us are drinkers, really, but Sadie occasionally sneaks a bottle of champagne from her mother’s many cases. Frankie never turns down the expensive stuff. He sips it with reverent joy, then inevitably has a Fred Astaire or Frank Sinatra moment. My fave is “The Way You Look Tonight.” Sadie likes “Someone to Watch Over Me.”

  “He got her out of her jacket. In less than ten seconds.” Frankie shook his head. “God help her if he tries to get her out of something else.”

  “Oh, no. He wouldn’t . . . You wouldn’t let him . . .”

  “For the record, I was kidding. But try to give them both just a little credit, if you would, please.”

  As he and Sadie waited for their turn, a good twenty female gazes latched onto Daniel. I suspected the hungry-looking guys were staring at him, too, no matter how good I thought she looked.

  “But it begs the question . . .” Frankie went on, reaching over to tap my wrist, “Truth: What is it about boys who are bad for you? Huh? And I don’t mean just you. I mean every otherwise intelligent girl who has lusted after a guy who bites or shreds, or even just never calls when he says he will. It’s mind-boggling.”

  “Right. Saint Francis,” I shot back at this, one superior snipe too many, “who has such an excellent record with—”

  “Ah! Careful,” Frankie warned me, eyes narrowed, giving me the Hand. “You might want to think before you finish that sentence. I might not have found Mr. Right, but I never, ever go for Mr. What-Are-You-Thinking.”

  “Ow. Hot, hot, hot!” A steaming plate replaced Frankie’s tight face in my line of vision. Chloe slapped the fried squash onto the table, following it with the spanakopita. Then she grimly examined her pinkened and empty hands. “Anything else?”

  “The chicken kebabs?” Frankie said. “Salad. Falafel.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Chloe stared at Daniel’s empty chair. She sighed. “Right.” She gave Frankie an absentminded pat on the shoulder and wandered off.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  I picked up a wilted paper napkin and waved it in surrender. “I’m hungry.”

  He gave me a long look, then reached for a piece of zucchini. “Ow. Hot.” I know Frankie; I knew it was a temporary reprieve. There was a squawk from the microphone. �
��If they sing ‘Endless Love’ or ‘No Air,’ I’m disowning them both.”

  They didn’t. They sang “I Got You, Babe” and it was amazing. Daniel kept his eyes on Sadie pretty much the whole time, like he was singing just to her. And, unlike Frankie, Daniel can sing. For the first few lines, Sadie kept her face down, hidden by her unnaturally sleek and heavy hair. Then her fab Sadie heart kicked in, and she faced him, chin up, and matched him note for note.

  The applause was thunderous. And it was a good few minutes before anyone else dared to take the stage.

  The clapping followed them back to our table in the boonies. Instead of walking in front of her this time, Daniel let Sadie go first. One of his arms circled but didn’t quite touch her back, like he was protecting her from her greedy fans. He still managed to look cool and a little amused, his usual. By the time Sadie reached the table, she’d folded back up a little. But she was smiling, and she left her jacket off and she hung on to some of the glow, even when a model-faced stick insect wiggled up to the table and cooed at Daniel until he went with her. They sang “No Air.”

  Frankie stayed off the stage for once, even when Daniel abandoned it for food. “I know when to sit it out,” Frankie said, waving a chicken-laden fork first in his brother’s direction and then toward the room. “Tonight I will let ’em watch and yearn.”

  I kept my head down and my mouth full. I didn’t want Frankie’s sharp eyes or tongue focused on me any more than necessary. It was a lot easier with Daniel taking up half of the food and most of the air.

  “What about it, Ella?” he asked when everything was gone except the parsley garnish. “When do we get the pleasure of your vocal stylings?”

  “I don’t sing.”

  “You mean you won’t sing,” Sadie corrected. I tried to be charitable about her treason; she goes pretty brainless around Daniel. “Ella sings really well.”

  “I’m sure she does.” Daniel tipped his beer glass in my direction. “In fact, I bet she could totally murder ‘Don’t Stop Believin’.” A song that is actually one of my guilty pleasures. I think he probably knew that. I think he probably had himself a lovely chuckle over it. Then he whispered, “Coward.”

  In another story, the plucky little heroine would have slapped both hands onto the table, making it wobble a little on its predictably uneven fourth leg. She would then have taken both hands, ripped the long scarf from around her neck and, chin high and scar spotlit, stalked to the dais, leaped up, and slayed the audience with her kick-ass version of “Respect.” Or maybe “Single Ladies,” for the sheer Yay factor.

  In this version, I gave Daniel what I hoped was a slayer look and busied myself refolding my napkin.

  He was, not surprisingly, unfazed. “Can I ask you a question?”

  I sighed. “Will my answer to that one make any difference?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “Fine,” I grumbled. “Ask.” I didn’t have to answer. He wasn’t my Hobbes.

  “Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii?”

  I gaped at him. “That’s your question?”

  “Nope.” He leaned back in his chair, propping one foot on the other knee. “That’s a question. My question is this: What’s the one thing you should ask yourself before getting involved with someone?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Do I look serious?”

  Maybe not serious, but vaguely deadly. Still, it was an interesting question, especially coming from Daniel Hobbes. I thought for a second. “‘Will he make me happy?’”

  “You think?” Daniel asked, then unfolded himself and got to his feet. “I’m outta here. Who’s coming?”

  We drove home in his battered Jeep. It smelled like smoke and cinnamon, even with the plate-size rust hole in the back that let in steady gusts of cold air. Daniel and Frankie were going to hear Be Cruel, the ska Elvis cover band that Frankie loves and Daniel tolerates. I hoped they would be able to talk Sadie into going with them. I just wasn’t up for it. I’d had enough mediocre covers for one night, and more than enough of Daniel and his brain-numbing pheromones.

  He drove with one hand at the bottom of the steering wheel and sifted through a pile of hand-labeled CDs with the other. Next to me in back, Frankie had his panama hat pulled low over his forehead, deliberately not looking. In front, Sadie was having a grand old time. Daniel found something he liked and shoved it into the player, which promptly spat it back out. “Put your hand here,” he told her, guiding her. “Hold it in until it sticks.” She did, it did, and a wailing guitar started competing with the wind and engine.

  “Genghis Khan’s Marmot,” Daniel yelled over the noise. “They’re playing the Farm next Saturday. You should come. It would, and I say this with all due respect, be good for you.”

  None of us mentioned that the following weekend, we would be floundering in Davy Jones’s Locker. We all knew better. And anyway, Daniel probably knew all about it.

  My clock read 1:10 when I flicked on the light in my room. I was quiet when I came home late, but not too quiet. I knew my dad would be half awake, listening for me. He was always exhausted after a Saturday night at the restaurant, but he wouldn’t really sleep until he was sure I was home.

  My clothes smelled like roasted chicken and shoe polish. I dumped them into my hamper, pulled on a Top Chef T-shirt—gift from Uncle Ricky—to sleep in, and dug my reliable costume out of the back of my closet. It would do. The painted blood looked fresh enough for the Bride of Davy Jones. Truth be told, it looked a lot better to me than when it had arrived, pristine, two years earlier. “Shred it. Paint it. Wear it to his funeral!” my cousin Alyssa had snapped as she dumped the dress, shiny and perfectly preserved in its carrier bag, onto the floor next to my bed. “Just don’t you let a guy promise you a damn thing when you’re wearing it. Swear?”

  I swore. Then I shredded, painted, and wore it to the Fall Ball.

  I’d decided not to go to this one at first. I thought I couldn’t take it, the undulating mermaids and their drunken pirate partners. I thought I wouldn’t be able to sit with Sadie and Frankie and watch Alex dancing with Amanda, her shells flattened against his chest, his hands on her sequined tail.

  I’d changed my mind somewhere in the middle of Chloe’s. Sad I could allow, even scared. I just wasn’t willing to succumb to coward.

  The shredded wedding dress was heavy in my hands. I thought I might add a paper anchor and chain this year, maybe a few wilted starfish. Black pearls would have been a nice touch, but the only pearls in the house were on Mom’s wedding choker. There had been more pearls, fake ones, in the vertical lace spray that had topped her veil. More still sewn onto her fingerless lace gloves. Not her fault, I thought every time I passed their wedding photo in the living room. It was the eighties.

  “Oh, that dress!”

  My grandmother stood in my doorway, optic in a furry leopard-print robe. It was hardly her style, but one glance into the window of Victoria’s Secret and she’d fallen in love. It was, she believed, exactly the robe Robert De Niro had worn in the boxing ring in Raging Bull.

  “Hi, Nonna. Did I wake you up?”

  “Oh, no. I watch Steven Tyler on the Saturday Night Live.” She stalked into my room, giving the dress the evil eye. “Bad luck, that.”

  “Only for Alyssa.”

  “Hmph. You have another party?”

  “The Fall Ball,” I told her. “Our Halloween dance.”

  “Ah. You have a boy to go with?”

  “Absolutely. Frankie.”

  She sighed, and perched on the edge of my bed. Her feet dangled a good six inches off the floor. “I like your Frankie, but he’s not going to make pretty bambini with you.”

  “Nonna!”

  “Well, is he? No.” She leaned forward. “Now, that boy with the nice voice and bony mother. He might do.”

  I sighed. “He might do a lot of things, Nonna.” I’m not one of them. “Dancing with me is not one of them.”

  “He liked my pane.”
/>
  “Yup. He did.”

  “And you. He likes you.”

  “Nope. That he does not.”

  “Hmph. You with all the answers about boys.”

  That made me smile. “Apparently, I don’t even know the right questions.”

  “Who does? Even kings don’t know the right questions. Eh, did you know there is a love story between a king and a queen in your history? Here.” She patted the bed. “Get in, cucciola. I will tell you.”

  15

  THE FOLKTALE

  “This, bellissima,” Nonna began, “is true love story . . .

  “The Costas, we were born to the sea and proud, very proud. Son after father after son build their boats and follow the fish. My bisnonno, father of my nonno, is proudest of all. He is the only son of a widowed mother—king of the sea. But he is . . . ppffftt . . .” Nonna blew out a breath and fluttered her fingers maybe an inch or two above her own head. “Basso. Piccolo. When he was young, his uncles and cousins at first fear to take him on board. They think the smallest of waves or biggest of tono . . . tono . . . What is it?”

  “Tuna,” I said.

  “Sì. Silly word. A tuna would flip him from the boat. But no one looks down on him. Ah, you laugh, you. Go on, laugh. They are not much bigger than he. So he is little, but he is proud, because his boat sails highest on the waves and soon brings in the most fish. Like gold, it makes him rich. And when a man becomes rich, he must think of marriage, or the village mamas will think of it for him. Capisci?”

  I smiled. “Yeah, I get it. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’”

  “Ah, sì!” Nonna nodded, delighted. “Austen. So smart.”

  “You know Pride and Prejudice?” I asked. She flicked my ear. “Ow!”

  “You think you have the only brain in this family? Eh? Ah, Darcy. My bisnonno is such a man . . . Fine, you laugh again. Not so handsome, I think, but just as proud. He struts though the square with his new shoes. He buys a carriage. But he gives to the poor, too, to the Church. He is kind to his sisters; he is a friend to many. He is raffinato, a gentleman And the girl he chooses? Hmm? Hmm?”